Konrad Lawson (University of St. Andrews)

Abstract

Koreans in Japanese-occupied China had a status that could make them dangerously vulnerable, temporarily powerful or, in some cases, fortuitously excluded from the worst that might face them in a violent and chaotic environment. Focusing on the Shandong peninsula and primarily making use of Chinese Communist and Republican sources, this talk explores the diverse and evolving way that Koreans—whether they were soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army, guerrillas fighting against the Japanese, or civilians of various stripes—were handled by Chinese resistance forces and by the competing regimes in the civil war that followed Japanese surrender. Koreans were seen as a troublesome category but Shandong authorities on all sides developed ways of dividing them between "good" (善良 shanliang) Koreans who could play a useful military and political role, Korean war criminals and "running dogs" to be punished, and the many others who were filed together with Okinawans and Japanese at the port of Qingdao as one more category of unwelcome residents to be expelled from China.

Speaker Biography

Konrad M. Lawson is a lecturer in modern history at the University of St. Andrews. He is now working on a book manuscript which explores the relationship between war crimes and treason in the aftermath of Japanese empire in Korea, China, and Southeast Asia.